A visual Journey into the Bible The Book of Genesis

A Visual Journey into the Bible Page: 44
Then all the springs burst and all sluices of heaven opened. It rained for forty days
and forty nights. The ark lifted on the water and all human beings perished except the
ones in the ark. When the waters had subsided, Noah sent first a raven out, then a
dove but both returned to the ark since there was no land to be found. After seven
more days Noah again sent a dove. This one returned, holding in its beak a freshly
picked olive leaf. When he sent the dove a second time, it did not return anymore.
Noah looked out and saw that the surface of the earth was dry.
Noah built an altar and burnt offerings to God from the animals. God was pleased
with this. He promised never again to curse the earth because of humans or to strike
down living things again as he had done. Then God again established the covenant
with Noah. As a sign of this covenant he put his bow – the rainbow – in the clouds.
The Bible cites the descendants of Japheth, Ham and Shem, Noah’s sons. One of
Ham’s grandsons was Nimrud, who was the first potentate on earth. The Bible tells
that Nimrud was ‘a mighty hunter in the eyes of Yahweh’. Nimrud’s empire contained
Babel, Erech and Accad all in the land of Shinar. Later, Nimrud’s son Asshur built
Nineveh and other cities. Of the cited cities one is quite well known by archaeologists.
Erech was Uruk in Mesopotamia. Mesopotamia was Shinar, the land between and
around the two rivers the Tigris and the Euphrates with the Euphrates on the West and
the Tigris on the East. These rivers drain the Zagros Mountains into a delta. Upstream
of the junction of the two rivers stood the town of Uruk, now in ruins. The ruins of
Uruk were excavated and examined. The town consisted around 2500 BC of a few
thousand houses surrounded by a broad wall. The town may have held between ten
thousand to twenty thousand people. There was a high ceremonial mound in the town
on which stood ziggurats. In Uruk scribes wrote on clay tablets in a cuneiform script.
About half a million of these tablets were found, testifying of an intense economic
and religious life.
The Book of Genesis tells that the whole world of these people still spoke the same
language. In a valley of Shinar they made bricks and baked them in fire. They told
themselves they would build a city and a tower with his top reaching heaven. For
mortar they would use bitumen. God saw the city and tower and remarked that all the
undertakings of the people with a single language would succeed, nothing they
planned to do would be beyond them. So he went down and confused the people and
their language so that they could not understand one another anymore. Yahweh
scattered them all over the world and they stopped building the city. That is why it
was called Babel.
Pieter Bruegel made two paintings of the tower of Babel. In the second one, now in
the Kunsthistorisches Museum of Vienna. The tower is indeed surrounded by a town
and Nimrud supervises the works. Bruegel had not seen the ziggurats of old
Babylonia that the Bible writers must have had in mind. In Babylonia, ziggurats with
temples on the top could reach hundred meters high and must have been indeed
almost a world wonder for the humble Jewish shepherds. These towers may have been
called gates of the Gods or Bab-ili. The most ancient structure Bruegel recognised
was Rome’s coliseum and that was probably the example he used. Like in the Bible
story, he showed the brick ovens and the tower reaching the clouds.
Copyright ©: René Dewil Date: October, 24 2000